4.  The applicant was born in 1939 and lives in Masku.
5.  On 16 February 1980 the applicant was injured in a car accident. On 15 October 1980 the Turku City Court (raastuvanoikeus, rådstuvurätten) rejected her request to increase the amount of compensation she had already received from an insurance company. She unsuccessfully appealed against the decision to the Turku Court of Appeal (hovioikeus, hovrätten) and subsequently the Supreme Court (korkein oikeus, högsta domstolen), which gave their decisions on 13 May and 5 October 1981 respectively.
6.  Subsequently, another insurance company, as well as the Social Insurance Institution (kansaneläkelaitos, folkpensionsanstalten) granted the applicant a pension on grounds of her disability.
7.  On 14 September 1993 the Supreme Court partly annulled the above court decisions in the light of new medical evidence presented by the applicant. On 1 December 1993 she filed a new claim for compensation alleging that she had become permanently unfit for work due to her physical injuries and a traumatic stress reaction caused by the accident. On 8  November 1994 the Turku District Court (käräjäoikeus, tingsrätten) ordered the other party to the accident and the insurance company to pay the applicant approximately 1,500,000 Finnish marks (FIM), mainly for loss of income.
8.  On 9 March 1995 the police started a pre-trial investigation, suspecting the applicant of, inter alia, multiple fraud. The applicant was questioned as a suspect for the first time on 19 April 1995.
9.  On 19 January 1996 the public prosecutor brought charges against the applicant in the Turunseutu District Court, which held its first session on 4 March 1996. In addition to written evidence, the court received testimony from several witnesses in the course of the proceedings.
10.  On 8 May 2000 the court concluded, inter alia, that the applicant had continued to work as an entrepreneur in the cleaning trade after the accident, although she was receiving a pension at that time. Furthermore, she had given false information to the tax authorities about her business activities and had falsely claimed to be disabled in order to obtain financial benefits. She was convicted of several offences including, inter alia, tax fraud, an accounting offence and aggravated fraud and was sentenced to one year and ten months’ unconditional imprisonment. She was also ordered to pay damages.
11.  The applicant appealed against the judgment to the Turku Court of Appeal claiming, inter alia, that the District Court had unlawfully relied on witness statements given to the police because some of the witnesses had refused to testify in court. The applicant had not been able to put questions to these witnesses. The court had also relied on the applicant’s own pre-trial statement. Furthermore, she claimed that the court had made an assessment of her medical condition on the basis of insufficient evidence.
12.  On 28 June 2002 the Court of Appeal, having held an oral hearing, upheld the judgment specifying, however, its own conclusions on the facts regarding the dates of the offences and modifying the amount of damages. The court received testimony from 20 witnesses as well as from the applicant herself. In its reasons it stated, inter alia, that the medical evidence presented to the court did not have any relevance to the assessment of the applicant’s criminal liability, since other evidence had shown that she had been working as an entrepreneur and cleaner at the relevant time. The Court of Appeal, unlike the District Court, did not rely on statements given to the police as evidence.
13.  On 1 April 2003 the Supreme Court refused the applicant leave to appeal.